Scheduling Meetings

So a few weeks have passed and our group is realizing that we do not have as much footage as we would like to have at this point. What does this mean for us exactly? We have about 10 more days to get footage, and if we don't get something we want, we will just have to scratch the idea entirely.

You might think "why can't you film anymore after 10 days? The project is not due until May 18th." Well if you have never edited footage before you might be surprised to know that it takes a VERY VERY long time. I timed myself during a previous project and it took me on average 10 minutes of editing to get just 30 seconds of finished product, and that was with sound-bytes ranging from 30 seconds to 1 minute. Therefore a 30 minute final product will take about 600 straight minutes of productive editing without changing my mind or messing up the editing.

Normally I would never suggest having 30 second to 1 minute sound-bytes, but for that project I only had 4 interviews so I had to make best with what I had. A good sound-byte in my opinion is between 7 and 15 seconds long. If it is any longer make sure you have B-Roll to play because without it you could lose viewers interest.

I'll talk more about these processes when I get to the editing phase of the project but for now it's back to how hard it is to schedule meetings.

Right now we have about 2 1/2 hours of total footage. Half of it is from a Student Outreach program that the PAC is involved with and the other half is from the Ailey II show.

2 1/2 hours may sound like a lot of footage, but to fill a 30 minute documentary it is far from enough.


James Cameron’s Titanic has 240 hours and 45 minutes of footage.

The average 45 minute TV Show shoots about 60 to 90 hours of footage per episode.

TO LEARN MORE LITTLE FACTS ABOUT FILM CLICK HERE!!


We probably are not going to shoot 58 more hours of footage, so instead we are going to try and get as much footage as we can in 10 to 15 different interviews. We have decided to break the documentary into 3 chronological parts: the past, the present and the future. For each one of those 3 parts we are hoping to have about 5 different interview pieces. We probably could get away with having just 10, but I believe a documentary will have a better effect with more variety in interviews.

To decide how we are going to get these interviews our group has broken down the chronological parts, and started to list people who would be good to talk to.